1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure generally relates to multiple-node processing systems and, more particularly, to control of data flows between nodes in a multiple-node processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A network aggregation switch device, or switching fabric, typically is used to control the transfer of incoming and outgoing data flows between ingress and egress ports of processing nodes in a computing system, such as a network, server or clustered computing device. The switching fabric often can implement various flow control mechanisms fobr data flows by modifying the switching fabric protocol to include additional fields so as to include extra “piggy-back” flow control information in these additional fields. However, many switching fabrics are architected to implement industry-standard protocols, such as an Ethernet protocol, an Internet Protocol (IP), or an Infiniband protocol, and the modifications to include extra fields to carry flow control information require non-standard protocol extensions, and thus incur additional cost in development and validation of the software interfaces required to implement such non-standard protocol extensions.